We live in a brave new world where cars wash themselves and a customized 3-D figure of your very likeness can be bought for just under US$100. It’s also a world where anyone can literally download 3-D printer plans for automatic gun parts–which, depending on which side of the barrel you’re standing on, might not be such great news.

But while printing off a full assault rifle still isn’t quite within the realm of possibility, it looks like you can use a 3-D printer to make a revolver strong enough to fire actual bullets. Which, in Japan at least, is completely illegal. One 27-year-old Kanawaga resident found this out the hard way when he was arrested this Thursday for doing just that.

YouTube isn’t all cat videos and aspiring singers, you know; it’s actually filled with genuinely creative and talented folks. As proof, we present to you a Japanese guy’s channel dedicated to brushing his teeth with guns.

I think the title of this post should be pretty self explanatory, but in the interest of full disclosure these girls aren’t, as far as we know, actually real military personnel, nor are they members of some kind of guerrilla insurgency.These photos come from a magazine dedicated to ‘survival game fashion’. But hey, the guns look real enough and the girls are hot, so who cares about technicalities?

In Japan where guns are an incredibly rare sight, toy guns and replicas can often look like the real thing. So when a teacher at a middle school in Fukuoka Prefecture confiscated what they thought was a fake gun from a student, the teacher handled the “toy” with very little care, and ended up accidentally discharging it in the staff room.

As someone who never took shop class growing up, I’m regularly baffled by how things work mechanically. Sure, I’ve seen the inner workings of machinery plenty of times after accidentally cracking its protective casing, but it’s hard to get a clear image of how all the moving parts mesh together when the whole thing is broken.

Thankfully, a series of GIFs making the rounds on the Internet in Japan is here to show how everything from an electric fan to a ship-mounted cannon operates. It’s surprisingly awesome.

At an annual open house event at the US Naval Base in Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture residents can enter and take a tour of the military facility and meet some of the people. However, this year some Yokosuka residents were up in arms over a photo showing what appears to be a group of children on a tour holding assault rifles with the marines.

Despite being a country where firearms are incredibly rare and licences to own them notoriously difficult to obtain, there nevertheless remain thousands of gun nuts in Japan. Thankfully, the majority of firearm fans here are content to spend hours poring over photos and technical diagrams of weapons, occasionally visiting shooting ranges or watching videos of pretty girls squeezing off a few rounds while dressed as French maids.

For those who prefer to have something to play with at home, there are airsoft guns from makers such as Tokyo Marui, which feature a shockingly high level of detail and come with all manner of bells and whistles in an attempt to recreate the experience of firing the real thing without the risk of death, serious injury or being arrested. But as aesthetically pleasing as these firing replicas are, one key element was always missing: sound.

In Japan it is a crime to own a gun; simple as that! …Okay, not quite. It’s not an easy task, but with proper training and a hard-earned permit, it is possible to become a legal gun owner in Japan. Down in Kumamoto Prefecture, we managed to share a word with one such gun owner. This 68-year-old man has had his own hunting rifle for quite a long time, but didn’t have many chances to go out shooting when busy with his full-time job and the daily grind. Now that he’s old and retired, he’s putting his gun permit to good use and making the most out of his remaining years. You won’t want to miss our full interview with this rare breed of gun-toting Japanese huntsman. Read More

What could be better than seeing a cute girl dressing as a member of AKB48 and dancing around in a uniform? A cute girl dressing as an AKB48 member firing military-grade weapons, apparently.

The following video and images come from Hyper Douraku, a Japanese gun enthusiast website that has teamed up with otaku favourite and “image” DVD (footage of girls in skimpy outfits in various poses) star Mii Aihara.

Dressed in a variety of hugely impractical outfits from AKB48 to Resident Evil‘s Jill Valentine, Mii heads down to the firing range to squeeze off a few rounds as part of the website’s “Guam Shooting Tour 2012.”

Why? We have no idea. But we still found ourselves watching bizarre video after bizarre video on the site.